


Boyfriend Material

by Deepdarkwaters



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Bad Pick-Up Lines, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oblivious Eggsy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-07 12:36:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7715155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Are you a cigarette? Cos you're smoking hot and I wanna put your butt in my mouth."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boyfriend Material

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elletromil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elletromil/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Boyfriend Material](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12118860) by [chatain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chatain/pseuds/chatain)



For a little while after V-Day the world was in chaos and Eggsy barely got a break between clean-up duties. It soon settled down. _Don't underestimate humanity's ability to keep calm and carry on_ , Merlin said once, which sort of seemed to explain it a bit.

Somewhere in there Harry woke up, not all that much the worse for wear considering he got shot in the face at point blank range. There was a rumour going around that the first thing he did when he was discharged from the hospital wing was stride right off to research and development to give the entire team in charge of creating the bulletproof lenses the most overblown Hollywood film kisses anyone in the department had ever seen, but that didn't seem likely.

"God, no," Harry said when Eggsy teased him about it, looking vaguely green around the gills but otherwise just as unfairly handsome as ever. "I shall need to brush my teeth for a solid week before I kiss anybody. Hospital mouth, you know."

Turned out Harry had all sorts of symptoms of hypochondria, but only in relation to the hospital. The food and drink and drugs and tests made his mouth feel disgusting. He was entirely convinced there was something wrong with the stitches on the back of his head where he'd fallen and his scalp was rotting just at the bald shaved patch where it was most visible. The needle scars in his hands and arms would get infected and never heal. He sniffed once and immediately started making phonecalls to arrange amending his will in case he'd caught some kind of hospital plague he wouldn't survive.

"He always like this?" Eggsy asked Merlin, bringing a cup of tea to his station between missions. On the screen he could see Roxy's glasses view, the twilight stretch of foreign landscape where she was waiting for her mark to return home to his country retreat and get himself into her sights to execute.

Merlin didn't need to ask for elaboration. "Afraid so. I don't like to tell him to pull himself together, I think the melodrama is as important to his recovery as the medicine."

Eggsy started to sit on the edge of Merlin's desk, then quickly thought better of it when he got glared at and tried to act like he never intended to in the first place, just standing there to the side instead holding his own travel mug of coffee. "The Professor Arnold time, was he like it then?"

"Not as badly, he was straight back to work. Briefly tried to tell me he was necrotising somewhere it doesn't bear thinking about, but then he got too busy."

"It's weird," Eggsy started, then fell silent and thought for a bit about what he was trying to say. It felt like a weird kind of betrayal saying it to Merlin – his boss, Harry's friend – in a way it hadn't when he'd talked with Roxy, who knew Hary even less than he did. "Like I used to think he was this hero. I still do, he is. Just he never seemed like a real bloke before, you know what I mean?"

"Fairy godmother to your Cinderella," Merlin said absently, tapping something into his computer to zoom in on Roxy's view, and Eggsy had to resist the urge to childishly nudge his spinny rolly chair.

"Shut up." Though to be fair it wasn't a bad analogy, which was a bit of a grim realisation. "You think he's gonna be alright?"

"Give him a few weeks to get his strength back up, he'll be back starting pub brawls before you know it."

* * *

It wasn't quite pub brawling. Harry's first mission back in the field involved seducing, separately, both the wife and boyfriend of a crooked diplomat to try and get secrets out of them. Eggsy was in Singapore when he heard, wilting in his hotel room as close to the roaring aircon as he could get and exchanging lazy bored texts with a bunch of friends while he waited for further instructions. The thought of Harry in full on seduction mode made his head feel a bit swirly, like he was drunk or just at the start of a fever. It was bad enough when Harry was just being himself: making terrible suggestive jokes, the sideways smirks when he was excited about showing off some brilliant new gadget, the way he had of looking directly into Eggsy's eyes when he was speaking like he was doing all he could to block out the rest of the world and really _listen_. Hard to imagine him actually putting any effort into seducing someone. Harry already kind of felt like the centre of the world.

           _aint it meant to be classified or sth?_

Harry always texted back with impeccable spelling and grammar like he was writing a formal letter to the queen. _You may be an agent, Eggsy, but I'm still your mentor. Anything I can do to prepare you for what's expected of you in this job._

           _sounds like hard work tbh bruv_  
           _like i aint even that bothered pulling on my own time no more_  
           _last time i got off with someone i hurt my back lmao_  
           _merlin was fuckin pissed he was like jfc are you 80 years old_  
           _how do you do your back in getting a bj_  
           _idk how i didnt do it on purpose did i_  
           _like when you knacker yourself sneezing wtf is that about_  
           _btw i dont think ill be much good shagging secrets out of ppl_  
           _aint that good at keeping my brain online tbh_

 _You learn. Perhaps you won't need to for a while, if ever. We all have different skills._  
_Merlin would be an idiot to take you off the things you do._  
_I wish you knew just how marvellous you are._  
_You fight beautifully. It's like watching a ballet._

           _yeah well i learnt from you didnt i_

 _No._

           _well no not actually_  
           _but you beating up them pricks in the prince with your brolly_  
           _stg i can remember it like step by step_  
           _when i close my eyes if i try its like i can project it inside my eyelids and watch it back_  
           _fuckin changed my life bruv_

 _You're tremendous to watch._

           _lol well thanks i spose_  
           _be as good as you one day :)_  
           _make you proud i swear_

 _Oh bloody hell, this again._  
_I am proud. You must know that._  
_I've apologised fifteen thousand times._  
_How many times do you need to hear it before you believe I'm truly sorry for those horrendous things I said?_

           _15001_

 _I regret it more than anything. I apologise, Eggsy, sincerely and humbly._

           _ok :) me too yeah_  
           _get off whatsapp and go and fuck for england_

* * *

The next time he saw Harry was two weeks later, when he came into the library carrying himself carefully like he was in pain everywhere and eased himself into an armchair by the fireplace, tipping his head back against the cushion with his eyes closed and making a frankly unnecessary moaning noise of pleasure that made Eggsy's skin feel itchy.

"What you making dinosaur noises for?" he asked from his place at the chess board, losing spectacularly to Roxy, and saw Harry crack one eye open slightly to look at him before it dropped closed again and he slumped down a little farther in his chair, messing up the flawless tailored line of his jacket shoulders so they bunched up a bit against his neck.

"I'm too old for this nonsense."

"Too old for sex?"

"Too old for sex twice a day for a fortnight."

Merlin came in, threw a box of ibuprofen at him, and settled down in the opposite armchair swiping at something on his tablet. "I hate to break the news so abruptly, but the next mission I've got for you may involve your nether regions as well."

"Noooo," Harry groaned softly, popping a couple of pills out of the casing and washing them down with whisky swigged directly from the decanter on the side table, which didn't seem like the best idea. "Send Eggsy. He's handsome. Young. Tremendously fit. Spectacular, really. Definitely the man for the job."

Since that first meeting with Harry, lounging carelessly against the wall of Holborn police station like the world's best-dressed hooker, Eggsy had been suffering sporadic fantasies about him saying nice things. Dirty stuff – he had a dream once that Harry crept up behind him and murmured in his ear a list of things he wanted to do to Eggsy if he'd only turn around and allow it – which he sometimes told Roxy about, but also weird, silly, vaguely revolting stuff he would never in a million years share with her or anybody else. On a plane coming back from Mexico once, instead of reading a book or playing his Xbox or messing about online like usual he'd spent several hours indulging in a daydream: Harry, softly smiling, dressed in the soft dark charcoal suit Eggsy liked best on him, reaching for his hand on a walk in the park. The scene had jumped then to a breezy summer day on an imaginary beach – the jagged dramatic cliffs of west Scotland, the turquoise crystal waters of Hawaii, sand almost as pale and fine as icing sugar – and a tartan blanket the colour of those horrible trousers Harry sometimes wore, a picnic basket full of champagne, which apparently dream-Eggsy liked more than real-Eggsy, and strawberries and chocolates he tongued from Harry's offering fingertips. Then he'd imagined bed with Harry: not the usual bedframe-banging-against-the-wall shit, which seemed fairly normal for a functioning twenty-five year old guy, but some horrendous imaginings like the trash in horrible corny romantic films. Scatters of kisses brushed on Harry's face, tickling the crows feet beside his eyes and the deep, delicious dimples bracketing his mouth. Resting his his head on Harry's rising-falling chest to listen to the thud of his heartbeat, finding Harry's hand and pressing it against his own so they could both feel the rhythms synchronise.

Weird, this falling in love shit. He was glad it had never happened before, and kind of hoped it never would again. Talk about distracting.

He tore his attention back to the room, first to the game ("Eggsy," Roxy said in despair as he moved his queen right into the path of her remaining bishop) and then to Harry, who'd shoved his glasses up to the top of his head so he could scrub both huge palms across his face as though he might be able to sweep away his exhaustion. "Word on the street says you banged more secrets out of people than anyone here."

"Absolutely not," Harry said, sounding scandalised. "The previous Lancelot overtook the rest of us put together. Eleven in one week, once. Came strutting back in here with an ice pack on his crotch and a grin like the Cheshire Cat."

"Well, please don't expect this Lancelot to follow suit," Roxy told them drily. "Checkmate, idiot."

"Rox, I'm never gonna get this."

"Not if you keep letting yourself get distracted," she said with a meaningful glance at Harry, now wriggling in his chair looking cross and uncomfortable. Merlin made a little sound that might be disapproval or agreement or stifled laughter – hard to tell with Merlin, really – which, just brilliant. Not like you can keep your weird puppyish crushes secret from spies when you work in a spy organisation, but it all seemed to be coming out far more quickly than he'd hoped.

"What do you say, Eggsy? Up for seducing an heiress or a swindling politician in the name of national security?"

Harry opened his eyes again at that, looking interested in the reply. No pressure then.

Like always, Eggsy fell back on brash bravado. "Yeah, why not. I'm a fucking champion at pulling. I got"—aimed a finger-pistol at Roxy, faked pulling the trigger, then blew pretend smoke from his fingertips—"skills like you wouldn't believe."

"I certainly wouldn't," she said, raising her eyebrows and folding her arms. "Would you like to demonstrate?"

"Alright. So say we're in a bar or something, yeah? Eyes meet across the crowd, we share a silent moment. I push between all the people, get right up close to your ear. You're holding your breath, you can't wait to hear what I got to say." He got up then, moved behind Roxy's seat, brushed the long fall of loose blond hair away from the side of her face, and murmured just loud enough for the others to hear as well, "Hey, beautiful. Is that a ladder in your tights or a stairway to heaven?" He tried to sidestep the elbow she pistoned back into his belly then but couldn't quite manage it and lost his footing, falling into the window seat laughing breathlessly at the revolted look on her face and, when he dared to glance over, the way Harry's mouth was trembling trying not to smile.

"No," Merlin said. "No. No. That is... no."

"Not doing it for you? I got more."

"Oh, bloody hell," Roxy muttered, getting up to pour herself a drink.

"Like, I dunno. If you was my big toe, Merlin, I'd bang you on allll the furniture."

"I had nothing to do with this," Harry declared, raising his hands when Merlin shot him a filthy scowl like he was to blame. "These are his own bad habits, don't blame me."

"Merlin, are you a beaver? Because _damn_."

"Jesus."

"Feel my sleeve." He got up, sauntered over, and thrust his arm under Merlin's nose. "Go on, feel it." Merlin raised one eyebrow and gave his cuff a cursory prod as if to humour him so he'd bugger off again. "Know what material that is? Boyfriend material."

"Eggsy, no."

"I'm training to be an astronaut, I'm interested in exploring Uranus."

"Eggsy."

"If you already lost your virginity can I have the box it came in?"

The look on Merlin's face was saying 'stop for your own good' but Harry's dimples were out in full fucking force as he tried not to laugh and, well, priorties.

"If you are what you eat I could be you by midnight. My name's Pinocchio, you wanna sit on my face and I'll tell you a lie? You must work at Subway cos you're giving me a foot long. Are you a cigarette? Cos you're smoking hot and I wanna put your butt in my mouth."

That's the one that broke Harry, surprising the most undignified snorting laughter out of him. Eggsy found himself grinning like a fool, he couldn't help it – Harry's laughter, when he really let it rip, was as infectious as the plague. Even Roxy was struggling not to show she was amused. "Traitor," Merlin accused as he marched past her to the door to leave in disgust.

"He'll get around the corner and laugh in private," Harry said, wiping his leaking eyes on his sleeve and battling his laughter down to a hiccup and a dorky, delighted smile. "Doesn't like to show weakness."

"Doesn't want to encourage either of you, you mean," Roxy corrected him, and swallowed the last of her Scotch. "Excuse me, I've a flight at five in the morning. Goodnight, Harry. Night, Eggsy," she added as she passed him, somehow managing to convey a whole argument's worth of words in her tone and the determined look in her eyes: _do not use those lines on him, but please for the love of god do something_.

Fat chance, no way, et cetera.

He flung himself at the chair Merlin was in before. There was a way he'd learned to arrange himself to make the most of the swish new suits, the exact sprawl and angle of limbs to look casual – the confidence of a rich man who was once a rich teenager and before that a spoilt child and pampered baby, who'd grown up in privilege and didn't know any other way to be. There was no point with Harry. Instead Eggsy sat the way he always had, back hunched and knees apart, no different in Kingsman wool and silk than he'd been in Reebok polyester, and said to Harry, "How's your knob?"

"Coping, thank you. Please pass my best wishes on to your own."

"Oh my days," Eggsy mumbled, just because he felt like awkward silence would be weirder. "Gotta be strange. How do you keep your mind on the job when your mind's, you know, on the job?"

Harry shrugged. "Practice. Don't forget, I've been doing this for several years longer than you've been alive."

Which was fascinating, in a twisted fucked up vaguely painful sort of way. He imagined how things might be different if he were a few decades older or Harry a few decades younger, but the thought felt like the mental equivalent of fingernails screeching down a blackboard. He didn't want a Harry he could have gone to school with. He wanted Harry exactly the way he was: quicker to tire than Eggsy himself, greying at the temples, captivating and clever and rude and remarkable no matter his age or the circumstances of their strange friendship.

"I saw the footage of you in Minsk," Harry says, shaking him out of his gloomy thoughts. There was something funny in his voice, indefinable. A sort of wariness or hesitation. "Spectacular. How many were there, fifteen?"

"Fourteen."

"And one of you."

"Yeah, but I ain't sure these baddies are getting the best minions they can afford, you know? They ain't very clever. Attack one by one like them dickheads in shitty action films. Or come in a few at a time but just end up laying each other out instead."

"You don't do yourself enough credit. I love watching you fight."

"Yeah, well. I ain't as good as you. Or Rox. She's like a fucking pinball, she's that fast."

"Eggsy," Harry said. He sounded tired. "I love watching you."

"I gotta pick up the gymnastics again. I seen them old vids of Lancelot, fucking mindblowing them tricks and flips and shit he done. I wanna get that good."

"You're perfect exactly the way you are."

"I dunno though, my right hand's good but I can't punch for shit with my left. If—"

"Eggsy. You're magnificent."

"Yeah, well, you wanna tell that to Mario down in the gym, always fucking on my back about—"

"Merlin did say you were going to be stubborn and oblivious about this and I shouldn't waste my breath."

Silence, dragging out to the point of discomfort and beyond.

"I'm sorry," Eggsy said in his politest Kingsman voice, "what?"

"Don't do that."

He switched back to normal, heart rattling like a drumroll. "What the fuck, bruv?"

Harry, exasperated, stared at him from the other armchair: tired, rumpled, perfect. "It's possible I've been given bad intelligence. I was led to believe that with the slightest of prompts you'd fall into my arms and or bed."

"Who fucking told you that? Was it Roxy? I'm gonna fucking wring her neck."

"I've clearly got hold of the entirely wrong end of the stick. Please excuse me, I never intended to make you feel uncomfortable."

"No," Eggsy said, but by accident he kind of yelled it in his excitement and Harry's eyebrows flew up high, wrinkling his forehead. "Oh my god, are you fucking with me?"

"Certainly not with"—Harry gestured at his own lap—"third degree friction burns."

"Harry, fucksake, you're gonna need to shut your fucking mouth right now." Like they say your life flashes before your eyes at the point of death, Eggsy's brain seemed to set itself into rewind mode then, flinging up memories of the last several months of conversations: every _you're wonderful_ , every _I can't stop looking at you_ , every time Harry let his careful construction of a gentleman spy mask slip for a minute and show off his idiotic beaming smile at something Eggsy said or did. He stumbled out of his chair onto the plush hearth rug hard enough to hurt his knees, landing heavily just in front of Harry's chair and running reverent fingertips up the chalk and charcoal pinstripe of his trousers. "You want me to kiss it better?"

He felt a trembling hand thread through his hair then and, above him, Harry's quiet, amazed laughter as he started to tug gently, drawing Eggsy's face up towards his own. "Up here first, if you please."

He tasted of whisky, and couldn't stop smiling.


End file.
